Tesla to Resume Taking Bitcoin when its Mining uses Clean Energy

Elon Musk has an interesting history with Bitcoin – mere months after allegedly engaging in a “pump and dump” scheme with the famed cryptocurrency, Tesla’s CEO is refusing to take Bitcoin as payment until clean energy is used in its “mining.”

The alleged scheme occurred back in February when Tesla invested $1.5 billion in Bitcoin, after which Musk tweeted about their purchase, and the electric car brand liquidated 10% of its holdings at their peak value.

Musk has vehemently denied any wrongdoing since day one – more recently, he tweeted that “Tesla only sold 10% of holdings to confirm BTC could be liquidated easily without moving market.”

In the same tweet, Musk reiterated that Tesla would resume accepting Bitcoin as payment “When there's confirmation of reasonable (50%) clean energy usage by miners with positive future trend.”

Tesla stopped taking Bitcoin payments in May amidst accusations that the cryptocurrency mining process is an energy hog.

At the time, Musk said they were concerned about “rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for Bitcoin mining and transactions, especially coal, which has the worst emissions of any fuel.”

Mind you, this was only two months after Tesla began taking Bitcoin as payment.

And needless to say, but the science of Bitcoin is anything but settled.

Bitcoin “mining” – i.e., special software that solves math problems and issues a certain number of Bitcoins in exchange – apparently uses 130 terawatt-hours of power per year, and in 2018, researchers at the Technical University of Munich and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology claimed that the entire bitcoin network was responsible for 22-22.9 million tons of CO2 per year (about the same as a city like Las Vegas).

Others claim that Bitcoin is already energy-efficient.

Alexander Benfield, a cryptocurrency analyst at Weiss Ratings, told MarketWatch that Bitcoin mining uses anywhere from 39-73% renewable energy, depending on the source, and that in many cases, it uses excess energy that would otherwise be wasted.

And while “proof-of-stake cryptocurrencies are typically much more energy efficient,” many of the “green” cryptos simply have underdeveloped networks, since Bitcoin’s outsized energy usage makes it more secure.

Whatever the science of Bitcoin’s emissions, Tesla’s move hasn’t really effected the crypto’s value, which is up to $40,640 as of publication.